Background: Since, the children are the future well-being of the entire society, it is necessary to see how the status of health of children can be improved.
Objective: This paper reveals the growth and nutritional status of 0-59 month old children in India and also tries to delineate the responsible socio-economic factors behind nutrition.
Methodology: The sample size of this study is 30,105 which have been collected by the third National Family Health Survey (NFHS-3). Data on socio-economic backgrounds are gender differences of the children, place, religion, education and age-group of mothers, wealth index and impact of colostrums on children’s growth and nutrition. Under nutrition has been assessed through the cutoff point of -2 of the z-score value corresponding to weight for age and height for age.
Results: The data show that in India, 35.7 per cent children are undernourished. By age-group distribution, the maximum occurrence is noticed in the age between 24-35 months. More than 50% occurrences of underweight and stunted children are found in the states of east to central belt of India. It is also found that the distributions of weight and height around the means remain remarkably stable over age. This would appear to indicate that using of colostrums and weaning practices are possibly more important factors than solid food intake. Data reveals that mother’s education and family welfare are the prime factors to regulate the nutritional status of children. The study also reveals that mother’s education, economy, age-groups, and religion have great impact on use of colostrums.
Conclusion: Analysis of possible regional and socio-economic factors thought to influence child nutrition outcomes does not reveal any substantive causal relations except for the mother’s educational status and household welfare.